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Influence of religion on education
Influence of religion on education
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I grew up in a Christian household and attended Catholic school most of my life. I do not consider myself to be a religious person; although I was confirmed as a Catholic. I still find myself interested and in tune with different beliefs. I was always curious about other religions. I decided to attend a Hindu ceremony for this assignment because I find this particular religion to be very interesting. I attended a ceremony at the temple of ISKCON, which stands for “The International Society for Krishna Consciousness”. ISKCON is a worldwide movement started by “His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupād”, and it is dedicated to the values and practice of Bhakti Yoga (also known as the path of dedication and love) in this case to their Lord “Krishna”.
The temple is located in Potomac, Maryland and lies on twelve acres of beautiful forest land. When I first arrived I couldn’t help but notice all the wild life around me. The deer were walking in harmony with the people and they didn’t seem to be scared of our human presence. I noticed homes within the temple grounds, which I later found out served as boarding homes for their followers. The temple was very simple; it wasn’t ornate like I had pictured it.
The particular ceremony I attended is called “Sayana Arati” and it took place inside the temple. When I walked into the temple I was asked to take my shoes off and place them in the wooden cubbies before stepping foot into the main room. The ceremony was not very full, perhaps because it was especially cold that night. Some of the women were dressed in a traditional “Sari” while others wore a more modern themed “Sari”. Most of the people including myself were dressed in casual clothing, which helped me feel more at ease because of the way I was dressed.
Everyone was seated on the floor as the ceremony commenced with the blowing of a conch shell, then the curtains were drawn back and the statues of the deity’s appeared. One of the statues was of “Vishnu” and another of his avatar “Rama” and his wife “Sita”, the last one was of “Krishna”. The ceremony was led by a Hindu priest, wearing a white cloth robe and to my surprise was of Caucasian decent. He held an oil lamp in front of the statues of the deity’s, which he moved in a circular motion while chanting the “Hare Krishna Mantra”.
Smith, Rick. "The Kinaaldá Ceremony in the Navajo Nation." ATH 175 Peoples of the World. 2004. Web. 26 Apr. 2014.
For about an hour people danced to music that was blasting from a large speaker. Then everyone started to get ready to leave. All of the women and girls who were there lined up into a procession with the young girls going through the initiation ceremony at the front. We made our way in the dark down the uneven paths, unsure where to place our feet since only a few people in our large group had lights.
The Bhagavad-Gita, a portion of the great epic the Mahabharata, is the “most typical expression of Hinduism.” It is eighteen chapters long and was composed around the first century BCE. The sage Samjaya recites the story to the blind king Dhrtarastra, the father of the Kaurava princes. While presenting ideas of wisdom, duty, and liberation in the midst of the rivalry between the Kauravas, the Bhagavad-Gita epitomizes the teachings of Krishna. Focusing specifically on the moral struggle of the Pandava prince Arjuna, the Bhagavad-Gita’s major themes include yoga, karma, dharma, and moksa. Yoga, being discipline or the strict and “attentive cultivation of mental character and meaningful action” , is crucial to the text because it is dharma yoga, acting properly according to one’s dharma, and bhakti yoga, a disciplined life of devotion that allows one to achieve moksa, or liberation, one of the four aims of li...
1.) Intro: I decided to focus my Religious Ethnography on a friend whom I recently have become close with. Adhita Sahai is my friend’s name, which she later told me her first name meant “scholar.” I choose to observe and interview Adhita, after she invited me to her home after hearing about my assignment. I was very humbled that she was open to this, because not only was it a great opportunity for this paper, but it also helped me get to know Adhita better. I took a rather general approach to the religious questions that I proposed to the Sahai family because I didn’t want to push to deep, I could tell Hinduism is extremely important to this family. Because this family does not attend a religious site where they worship, I instead listened to how they do this at home as a family instead.
As the sunrises over the crisp fall horizon, followers begin to surround the sacred space in anticipation for what is about to take place. The sacred space is soon surrounded by people who are dressed in the sacred colors, some wearing necklaces of their totem, while others wear headdresses that adorn with their sacred symbol. People begin to drink, play music, and prepare a banquet feast for each other, creating a festival atmosphere in hope that today’s ritual will be a success. As the ritual gets set to begin followers begin to crowd into the sacred space, surrounded with pictures and names of those who have reached greatness. As the ritual begins, music is played in order to bring everyone together and prepare for the events that are about to unfold. It is now that the followers have a very simple focus, to aid in the success of the ritual. Those who celebrate the ritual take there places in the middle of the sacred space, with the followers surrounding them; now that the ritual has begun the celebrants begin to perform and focus on certain actions in order connect themselves with the transcendent sacred. The followers who look on begin to aid by chanting, allowing themselves to also transcend. In hopes that the ritual was a success, everyone does their part until the last second of the ritual is completed, it is only then that it can be decided if the ritual was a success and they can either celebrate or grieve by signing in their most sacred song, bonding them once again with each other.
The Bride and her father enters. Typically the Bride's mother will stand as a signal for all of the guests to stand. Sometimes the Minister will announce, "All rise for the Bride."
The actual building itself appears similar to a castle. The architecture had royal features due to the triangular points on the top of the building. There were three open doors; one big main entrance in front, two small side doors, and all the guests entered through the main entrance. Once I walked in, a big gold Buddha was centered in the back surrounding multiple iconic religious statues. There seemed to be about a hundred religious statues highly dazzled in silver or good.
Hinduism is easily the oldest major world religion that is still in use today. It has not only survived countless attacks but has also thrived and has changed little to none in the last 2500-3000 years. "The Aryans are said to have entered India through the fabled Khyber Pass, around 1500 BC. They intermingled with the local populace, and assimilated themselves into the social framework. The Aryans did not have a script, but they developed a rich tradition. They composed the hymns of the four vedas, the great philosophic poems that are at the heart of Hindu thought" (The Aryans and the Vedic Age, 2004, par. 2).
Each month our educational center section provides the Hinduism Today staff with a 'kind of group meditation. Individually we ponder our subject, and together we discuss it in detail. These past 30 days our meditation was on death. You might think we had a morbid March. Not so, since, as U.S. General George Patton rightly noted, "For Hindus death is the most exalted experience of life."
Eliot, Sir Charles. HINDUISM AND BUDDHISM. 1921. Vol. 1. London: ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL LTD, 1954. 3 vols. wisdom library. Web. 9 Dec. 2013. .
I was always fascinated in the Buddhist religion and this class assignment was a great opportunity for me to take advantage of my curiosity. I decided I would visit a Buddhist center. With the company of my mother, I went to the Diamond Way Buddhist Center in Miami. According to my interview with the Buddhist that instructed the meditation service, every Monday and Friday they have a meditation service for the 16th Karmapa meditation from 8:00pm to 8:30pm. This center is part of the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism (Anonymous). Upon arriving, I realized that it was in someone’s home. Many Buddhist offer their homes for Buddhist centers and are unpaid for their services. However, they do accept donations. Before entering the house, we had to remove our shoes. When we entered I could smell the scent of incense burning. As presented in World-Faiths, removing your shoes before entering a Buddhist center or temple is a form of worship. Also, incense and candles are used to represent Buddha’s enlightenment (World-Faiths).
Many foreigners cannot know what makes Hinduism so strange. Hinduism lacks an uniting belief system and many people do not know faithfully what makes up the Hindu religious belief. After one goes in-depth concerning Hinduism, one must be familiar with the fundamental details about this difficult religion. Do you realize that almost 80 percent of the India people find themselves being Hindus? Hinduism is in addition known as the Sanatana-Dharma, which means everlasting religion. Hinduism is the third leading religion following Christianity and Islam and has no one initiator, teacher, or spiritualist and it is not an unconvinced religion. All through this article, I will look further in-depth on what makes up the Hindu religion what the traditional and group influences that have prepared Hinduism fundamental to Hinduism, and I will provide details the yearning for freedom from early existence.
I decided to visit a Hindu temple because the Hindu religion was the religion that I knew the least about and was interested in. This assignment gave me an opportunity to learn more about this religion and what their worship services and rituals were like. The temple that I went to was called BAPS Shri Swaminaryan Mandir and it was located in Lilburn. As soon as I walked in, I was amazed by the beautiful architectural design of this Temple. It seemed like it took a lot of hard work and dedication to make the place what it is now. While I was at the temple, I watched the Hindus perform an ancient Vedic ritual called the Abhishek, a ritual bathing to honor the murti of their God.
I will now examine what it means to be religious with a critical enquiry into Buddhism, Hinduism and
He usually arrives dressed in his wedding attire on the back of a horse, or sometimes on the back of an elephant. “The wedding altar (mandapa) is built the day of and the groom is welcomed by his future mother in law where his feet are then washed and he is offered milk and honey. His sister in law will attempt to steal his shoes and if she succeeds, the groom must pay her to get them back” (beau-coup.com). At the wedding venue the bride waits for the groom in a room covered in garland, when the groom arrives they exchange garland. After this, the brides family will welcome the grooms family to the wedding. Like Christian weddings, the father of the bride gives the bride away at the wedding, this is called a Kanyadaan. A priest will facilitate the marriage by reciting mantras or holy hymns, but the bride and groom marry each other. The bride and groom are considered married when the groom ties a thread that symbolizes his vow to care for the bride. He ties it in three knots that symbolizes the gods, Brahma, Vishnu and Masheshwara. The ceremony takes place around a fire and the god, Agni is considered the witness to the union. “The bride and the groom then circle the fire seven times, in a clockwise direction, called Saat Phere which signifies seven goals of married life which include religious and moral duties, prosperity, spiritual salvation and liberation, and sensual gratification” (Gullapalli